HAVANA - "I found Marta Beatriz thinner but with the same drive as always,"
according to her lawyer, Dr. Amelia Rodríguez, who on Sept. 7 visited the
prisoner at her cell in the Villa Marista (former religious center now used
as a jail and site of the government's Office of State Security - OSS).

Rodríguez said she and the polítical prisoner - Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello,
54 - had discussed the legal aspects of the case but also talked of the
international as well as domestic repercussions of the prisoner's successful
hunger strike. (Marta Beatriz ended her fast earlier after she learned that
the appeals court had agreed to her demands for a hearing, to which she was
entitled under existing Cuban law.)

Marta Beatriz had not had a chance to discuss with her lawyer her petition
for conditional liberty, which the lawyer could present to the court after
the prisoner had completed half her sentence.

Meanwhile, "Marta has decided to remain in jail until July 16, 2001," when
she will have completed the three years and six months of her sentence by
the Cuban regime, Rodríguez said. She added that Marta already should be
given the benefits of conditional liberty.

The prisoner's legal representative took advantage of being at the site of
an Office of State Security (OSS) so that she might speak with the chief
prosecutor for the government, OSS Lt. Col. Juan Soroa.

On that same afternoon, as had been expected, Marta's lawyer also presented
Marta's appeal to the People's Supreme Court. The court told her it would
"soon" provide a response to the appeals of three of the political
prisoners, namely those of Marta herself and of Vladimiro Roca and René
Gómez Manzano.

As for the other prisoner of the "famous four," Felix Bonne Carcassés,
yesterday it was reported that he had been denied an appeal for conditional
liberty because, according to the Supreme Tribunal, he had not presented his
case for sentence annulment.